Anyone like to shoot?

[ironheadjack]

Thank you quoting another persons words and making no attempt to form your own opinion.

No where in what you quoted does it prove how having a gun in your home makes it less safe. In fact what you quoted completely strayed from your original point and went into another arena of the gun control debate. Guns are simply pieces of metal that require human interaction to do anything. There is a loaded handgun within two feet of me right now as I write this, tell me how I am less safe. My fact about using guns for protection doesn't stray from your point of homes with guns are less safe, it directly correlates with it.

None of this should be particularly surprising. We know that overall, firearm deaths are lower in states with stricter gun-control laws. More recently, we've learned that the expiration of America's assault-weapons ban was responsible for a substantial portion of the subsequent increase in gun deaths in northern Mexico. It's really not terribly shocking that making it harder to get your hands on machines designed to kill people results in fewer people being killed. But we've worked very hard over the past few decades to convince ourselves otherwise.

That is completely and utterly false. If you follow the link on that site to the research and data, you will understand what I said previously about studies that "are often flawed and misrepresented to suit the ideology and end-goal of the group presenting the flawed study." The number one state with the most oppressive gun control is California, but somehow with all that gun control they still lead the way with the highest murder rate and murder by firearm. With 1,879 deaths in 2012, California has the highest number of murders anywhere in the US - and perhaps unsurprisingly, the highest number of murders by firearm too (1,304). The lowest numbers were recorded in Alabama (1 firearm murder), Vermont (2) and Guam where there were none in 2012.

If you do a tiny bit of research you will discover that Vermont has almost no gun laws, they even have a thing called Constitutional Carry, which says residents of Vermont have a Constitutional right to carry firearms on them. Again this is Vermont, a state known for it's hippie population and the only state to have a socialist senator.

The states with the highest murder rates always have the most gun control. California, Chicago, NYC, New Jersey, DC

I don't even know what to make of "we've learned that the expiration of America's assault-weapons ban was responsible for a substantial portion of the subsequent increase in gun deaths in northern Mexico". The federal "assault-weapon" ban expired in 2004 after 10 years on the books when the FBI concluded that the draconian law had no effect on crime rates. Operation Fast and Furious was another failure at the hands of the federal government specifically the BATFE, in which they allowed straw purchasers to sell guns to Mexican cartel members in hopes of following these guns to high ranking cartel members.

The problem with gun control laws is that laws only effect the law abiding. Criminals by their very definition are not law abiding. Yet, big government types believe that they can legislate away evil; which is obviously impossible.